Temple Releases Fifth Edition

This spring, Professor of Education Charles Temple completed the fifth edition of “Children’s Books in Children’s Hands: A Brief Introduction to Their Literature, Loose-Leaf Version,” with Pearson eText. This latest edition of the guide for current and prospective teachers is in a four-color format, with more ancillaries and electronic extensions than in any previous edition.

“Children’s Books in Children’s Hands” first appeared in 1996 and has been on a four-year publication cycle. Temple and co-authors Miriam Martinez, a teacher educator at the University of Texas at San Antonio, and Junko Yokota, the director of the Center for Teaching through Children’s Books and a professor emerita of National Louis University in Chicago, provide a wealth of richly illustrated ideas for sharing literature with children. The book includes practical applications, unique pedagogical features, and outstanding teacher and student supplements.

Continuing its strong emphasis on books from many cultural groups, this edition gives readers hundreds of annotations of newer titles for children, including entire chapters on multicultural books and international books expanded from the last edition. It also includes tools to help teachers find books that center on the cultures of English language learners and help draw them into discussions.The variety of books includes folktales, poems, picture books, multicultural books, novels, fantasy and science fiction, information books, and biographies.

Temple is the co-founder and director of the Reading and Writing for Critical Thinking Project in association with the International Reading Association. Currently, he also volunteers for CODE, a Canadian literacy organization, helping produce indigenous children’s literature in Liberia, Tanzania and Sierra Leone. He received his B.A. in English from the University of North Carolina, and his M.Ed. in curriculum studies and his Ph.D. in reading education from the University of Virginia. He also taught at the University of Houston-Victoria.